I Am Love, Luca Guadagnino (2009)

I suppose opera is an early form of the music video, right? Similarly, this is a sort of music video for some lovely pre-existing John Adams pieces, and if you’re a fan of his carefully nailed-down chaos, you may be the sort who will enjoy this. As in opera and music videos, plot here runs a distant second in importance to mood and tone. While we are tempted at times to read the story here as an indictment of the inbred and isolated bourgeoisie, any such avenue of thought very quickly runs into trouble, as visual style trumps substance over and over again. I’d go so far as to say that Guadagnino makes Antonioni’s La Notte look like a Marxist tract.

Thus not exactly my cup of prosecco, but I can’t claim not to have enjoyed it. It’s an exact replica of what we used to call “art-house” pictures, and you don’t see too many of them any more.